Union Minister Shri Piyush Goyal hosted a unicorn roundtable during Startup India Innovation Week to celebrate the growth of 40 unicorns and support their growth in India. The 40 unicorns shared their experiences, growth factors, and areas for boosting the Indian ecosystem. Goyal encouraged unicorns to form a unicorn club or association to address access to capital for startups. The conversation also touched on streamlining regulatory processes, increasing Tier-2/3 city access, and learning from private sector financial institutions’ best practices.
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), this year, celebrated the coming together of the country’s key startups, entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers and other stakeholders on innovation and entrepreneurship across the country from 10th – 18th January 2024.
Marquee announcements and launches included ‘StartupShala’ – Startup India’s Accelerator Program, a 3-month long accelerator program for early-stage startups to provide them access to knowledge, network, funds, and guidance required to scale up.
Each cohort of the program will be focused on a particular sector, the first one being CleanTech and 20 startups per cohort will be handpicked by experts through an open call for application. The applications have been opened on Startup India Hub from 10th January 2024: https://www.startupindia.gov.in/content/sih/en/Startup_Shala.html.
To inspire students and aspiring entrepreneurs, 5 dedicated webinars focused on ‘How to Start Up’ were organised titled ‘MAARG Mentorship Series for Budding Entrepreneurs’. Industry leaders and mentors shared insights and key lessons about the basics of starting a startup. All these sessions were hosted live on Startup India social media handles as well as on the MYBharat portal for the Yuva entrepreneurs.
Startup India Innovation Week’s 75+ physical events served as a catalyst for entrepreneurship, showcasing India’s thriving ecosystem and igniting the dreams of countless aspiring founders. From workshops empowering women entrepreneurs to training grounds for incubator champions, the week saw mentors and mentees sharing wisdom, igniting the minds of aspiring pioneers. Several thought-provoking roundtables were conducted in several cities with stakeholder discussions, forging alliances that will shape the future startup ecosystem.
The one-to-one mentorship of startups with corporates was also launched earlier in the week. The series included exclusive handholding and guidance to shortlisted startups with the corporates in domains of financial lending and support, operations, sustainable innovations, and disruptive technology. The corporate partners onboarded were HCL, HSBC India, Qualcomm India Private Limited, and TCS Foundation.
To create further awareness about innovation and sustainability, a virtual panel discussion was conducted with global partners of Startup India. The panel focused on the 5 key pillars of Innovation including Incubation, Funding and Financial Assistance, Public Private Partnership Model, Market Access and Government Infrastructure. A dedicated workshop was conducted in Mumbai, Maharashtra to sensitise startups on the benefits available to them on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM). A successful Workshop on Public Procurement was also conducted at the University of Hyderabad, Telangana, on 9th January 2024, which saw participation from over 70 entrepreneurs.
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